For those of you that didn't know me, Gabby didn't know me, and she knows me just a little bit, and she said I didn't know your name was Paul and so some people actually think I have a twin brother named Paul, and, I do not, that's me, and, but, you'll hear Paul, you'll hear Kumi, I like to say that. My name is Paul, but my friends call me Kumi. And then if I don't, if I'm, I'm being mean to you, I said, but you can call me Paul. But, so, but I just, I'm very excited to be here with you, but before we get started, I wanted to kinda share with you my thought process as I considered whether I should continue to preach on the first Sunday of the month in December.
I don't know how long I've been doing this, maybe about 10 years, on the first Sunday of the month in December, but I do feel the weight of standing before you all each time I have preached. I do not take this lightly, and I was conflicted whether I should preach or not this year. So many thanks are given to my care group who prayed for me and particularly, particularly Stephanie Yee, who came up to me and said, Kumi, just my two cents. I really like it when there's a different flavor in the pulpit and so I said, oh, OK, a different flavor and, and thank you to the men's Bible training, if you guys can make it, please come out on Tuesday nights, especially Pastor Mike and Pastor Milton as they took us through how to exposit a passage.
And I had never, been through that training. I, I had a little bit when I was in college, was it 45 years ago, we had, I know I had to take an inter-session class to get units and it was, how to map out a passage and so. I didn't. how much can you learn in two weeks?
So, I did pass the class, but I don't think I did really well. But going through that with Pastor Mike, Pastor Milton, and asking a lot of questions, I was able to get a, a better handle on how to exposit a passage. I also wanna thank Silas and Jonathan. I don't think they're here....
